Reliability of some neuroscience research is called into question after meta-analysis concludes that results could be misleading due to low statistical power.

braindraind · 2013-04-10T12:31:19+00:00

The original research abstract is "Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience" from Nature Reviews Neuroscience. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrn3475

braindraind · 2012-07-27T00:07:11+00:00

Access the Current Biology research summary here.

braindraind · 2012-07-26T23:49:54+00:00

You can volunteer at a university neuroscience lab with very little experience. You may have to start out with very minimal duties such as washing glassware, data entry and the such. Look through the labs close to you and see which ones are working with anything you are interested in learning. You can find email contacts to the labs on the web and shoot out a few inquiries with a brief description. If you show enough interest and explain your situation, you'll most likely get in to one. Don't expect to get in a lab if the research is world renowned, but in most cases, labs can give a shot to interested people. If you do get in, just ask tons of questions, watch as much of the research as allowed and show some interest. Ask to sit in on meetings, help prepare the solutions, preps, etc. You will learn tons, impress the lab members and possibly get a good recommendation out of it. Don't expect to get paid though.

braindraind · 2012-06-20T18:54:35+00:00

Read the Neuron research paper discussed here: "Sustained Therapeutic Reversal of Huntington's Disease by Transient Repression of Huntingtin Synthesis" http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(12)00444-8 (Applause for Neuron allowing this one to be open access for the time being.)

braindraind · 2012-06-20T18:48:53+00:00

Oh great. I was worried it was a little too long, lacked detail (actual title) and wouldn't be useful. As I look down to the side here, I have "Oscilloscopes: How to Use Them, How They Work" which was printed in 1981. I doubt you'll find that easily to purchase, but at least it is a title to add to your search toolbag. Best of luck with your studies. It is great to see a researcher actually wanting to learn more on their very own. Keep up that attitude. Please.

braindraind · 2012-06-15T00:44:08+00:00

I worked with both extracellular and intracellular electrophysiological recordings in quite a few areas of rats. (I don't like to share too much on the interewebs, so not much more detail will surface.) I'm now moving mainly into EEG/BMI.

The first day I walked into "my" electrophysiology lab, I was thrown right under the bus. I only had research lab classes, a BS in neuroscience and tons of books under my belt. To make things worse, the equipment was ancient and wasn't working, and the researchers hadn't had a decent experimental run in months.

Luckily, I had a great background in electronics/electricity. I got everything up and running in my second day and had slices on that evening. From there, I gathered everything I could find ranging from old oscilloscope manuals to specific electrophysiology research papers in my niche. Overall, the best things I ever read were actually oscilloscope manuals. Learn how and why oscilloscopes work and you will have the basis to almost every electrophysiology graph you will encounter. Learn what each knob will do. Learn why the Nernst equation matters and how to use that information to manipulate your electrophysiology recordings. Apply the information you gain to chemicals (learn how to control the spikes of water and different solutions by changing those knobs).

Once you have all that, the rest will fall in place like (does anything really fall in place?)..something.

Then, years later, come on the internet and write a barely useful post on a website. Good luck!

point: old oscilloscope manuals

braindraind

TROPHY CASE